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Santa Claus

S

Sthira

Active Member
My son who just turned 5 told me the other day that he doesn't believe in Santa Claus. He wasn't really bummed out about it or anything. I just said "oh, really?" and let it go at that. Is it common for kids on the spectrum to figure this out early on.
 
I think it varies from individual to individual - regardless of whether they're on the spectrum or not.
I started having my doubts at 6 but didn't stop believing until I was 7.
 
Yeah, I think it varies just as much for children on the spectrum as those not. I believed in Santa until I was 9, because how else would the presents magically appear under the Christmas tree over night? (Maybe it was my parents staying up until 3am to put them out while I was asleep, but I prefer to think it was Father Christmas).
 
Sthira said:
My son who just turned 5 told me the other day that he doesn't believe in Santa Claus. He wasn't really bummed out about it or anything. I just said "oh, really?" and let it go at that. Is it common for kids on the spectrum to figure this out early on.
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I think I might have been around his age when I figured it out.
 
I never believed in Santa Claus. My parents made it clear to me that they were the one who bought me the presents, and always asked me what I wanted. I don't know why parents always insist on telling children such tales that are so obviously not true. A fat guy with a beard is going to ride a sled through the sky and deliver presents to all the children of the world in one night? Oh, come on! Not even Amazon is capable of such miracles :p
 
I just knew that Santa was my mother when my friend from school told me that she saw my mother buying the toy... Dont remember how old i was... hehehe

My daughter says that she WANNA believe until she dont wanna anymore... so... I will respect it. She has 11.

:):):):):)
 
Here's something that rather interestingly talks about why people lie about the existence of Santa Claus:

 
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I stopped believing in Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, or Père Noël, wherever you are in the world) at a very young age but pretended to believe to please my parents and my younger siblings.
 
My parents went to great lengths to establish the existence of Santa Claus. Every Christmas Eve we would leave oatmeal and carrots out for the reindeer, and every Christmas morning there would be hoof prints in the snow, the carrots would be chewed on, and the oatmeal depleted and scattered about. I was convinced of the honesty of my parents and figured that magic must be real.

I think I was around seven when I started to question Santa's existence. I reasoned, however, that if Santa wasn't real then all other paranormal phenomena were likely lies as well, created to reassure and control people. That possibility was too horrible to fathom. More than anything feared death and wanted desperately to believe in an afterlife. I wasn't ready to give that up.

By the time I was nine the evidence was overwhelming. The quality of toys correlated suspiciously with my parent's financial situation. The bite marks in the carrots were conspicuously humanoid. One year my parents even slipped up and forgot to use different wrapping paper for Santa's presents, to say nothing of the uncanny similarities in their penmanship. So that was it. There was no magic man who delivered presents to an impossible number of children every year. There was no afterlife, no god, no miracles.

I never asked why my parents lied to me, but I suppose it was out of love. They wanted me to have happy memories, to experience wonderment and anticipation. But ultimately they taught me a valuable lesson; to be sceptical of what people say, even when those people are the ones I love.
 
Thanks, Datura. This is partly why I am not inclined to attempt to maintain the story. I'll keep things low key and if he asks me about it I'll just tell him that Santa Claus is real in the sense that he is a symbol of hope, kindness, and other good stuff. I think he'll be cool with that.
 
Sthira said:
Thanks, Datura. This is partly why I am not inclined to attempt to maintain the story. I'll keep things low key and if he asks me about it I'll just tell him that Santa Claus is real in the sense that he is a symbol of hope, kindness, and other good stuff. I think he'll be cool with that.
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Yeah, I think that's a good decision. If I have future kids, they'll end up learning about lies and stuff, but I don't want that to come from thinking that I was deceiving them. The rest of the world will be good enough at teaching them about that. I want to teach them that there are still some things that are true that they can continue to believe.
 
When I started to suspect that santa claus wasn't real I repeatedly asked my mum but she wouldn't give me a staight anwser and I just remember feeling really frustrated and annoyed that she knew the answer and wouldn't tell me. Ultimately, I worked it out through detective work, much like Datura.
 
Vinca said:
When I started to suspect that santa claus wasn't real I repeatedly asked my mum but she wouldn't give me a staight anwser and I just remember feeling really frustrated and annoyed that she knew the answer and wouldn't tell me. Ultimately, I worked it out through detective work, much like Datura.
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As soon as I said to my mom "Santa Claus is really just the parents, right?" She admitted it was true. It was no big deal, and I'm grateful for that.
 
I'm not sure that I ever really believed in him. Nor fully disbelieved. I remember my neighbour telling me he had just discovered Santa Claus wasn't real (but not to tell his younger sister), but I don't think I was ever surprised. I knew where my parents hid the presents. At night we'd try to pretend to sleep and catch them putting presents at the foot of our bed. And presents were just as likely (if not more so) to be labeled as coming from Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. It was just my parents having some fun.

On the other hand, I do believe the man Nicholas of Myra was a real historical (and mortal) person. And his deeds were such that someone sometime decided he deserved the honourific of 'Saint'. But he's not what society has made him.

As we are Christians, we celebrate Jesus' incarnation at Christmas, not Santa. We tell our kids that Santa is for those who have nothing else to celebrate at Christmas time.
 
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A friend of mine said that in her family, the whole Santa thing was treated like a game. Everyone would gather together in a room and pretend they could hear reindeer footsteps etc while someone else put out presents, but there was no attempt to have anyone actually believe in Santa. Since kids can begin make-believe games at age four-sometimes even age three, everyone understood the playful pretend nature of the whole thing.
 
Thanks, Ste11aeres. That's a great idea. I might try moving towards some sort of variant of this as my son enjoys playing make believe games.
 
zurb said:
I'm not sure that I ever really believed in him. Nor fully disbelieved. I remember my neighbour telling me he had just discovered Santa Claus wasn't real (but not to tell his younger sister), but I don't think I was ever surprised. I knew where my parents hid the presents. At night we'd try to pretend to sleep and catch them putting presents at the foot of our bed. And presents were just as likely (if not more so) to be labeled as coming from Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. It was just my parents having some fun.

On the other hand, I do believe the man Nicholas of Myra was a real historical (and mortal) person. And his deeds were such that someone sometime decided he deserved the honourific of 'Saint'. But he's not what society has made him.

As we are Christians, we celebrate Jesus' incarnation at Christmas, not Santa. We tell our kids that Santa is for those who have nothing else to celebrate at Christmas time.
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But many Christians still practice the Santa tradtion. Christan belief and Christian practices are two very different things. Many Christmas traditions (including the time it takes place) are of pagan origins. Add to that centuries of reinterpretation, local customs, and comercialization and you have a convoluted distorted hibrid of a holeday, ever evolving and acruing new icons and meanings, as absurd as it is beautiful.
 
Datura said:
But many Christians still practice the Santa tradtion. Christan belief and Christian practices are two very different things....
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True. A lot if things are at play here.
Some Christians would simply see it as cultural and not have a problem with it. Others just don't think. Some are Christian only in name, and not in either belief or practice. We cringe every time we see a santa come into a church.
Personally, I don't have a problem with reinterpreting cultural times/practices as long as it stays within the realms of contextualization and not syncretism. Some strict Christians don't even celebrate Christmas as its not one of the 'ordinances'.
I wouldn't have a problem with the remembrance St Nicolas if it hadn't grown into a ridiculous fairy story that overwhelms the story of Jesus.
But that's just my take.
 
Although I've stopped believing in Santa when I was 6 or 7 years old...I have to admit, something definitely landed on my roof when I was 4 years old.
I heard the jingling bells one night when I couldn't sleep (due to the excitement) and moments later the sound of hooves hitting the roof above my head. Thinking Santa had arrived, I smiled before closing my eyes and going to sleep - due to remembering the age-old rule that Santa knows when you're sleeping.
Looking back at this despite my belief in the big red burglar fading as the years have passed, this is one mystery I truly have never been able to solve; the roof of my family's old house is not one you can climb on and I seriously doubt my parents would be attempting to climb up on the roof late at night just to try and fool us into thinking that Santa had arrived.

As I looked more into it, I've actually found there's been many people who have actually claimed to have seen Santa for real.
I am not joking!
Here's some links to have a read through. It's pretty interesting stuff - talking not only about Santa sightings but other paranormal stuff around the holiday season:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2...santa-claus/4HNUxlrZLFvo3T46VNTSJL/story.html
http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2014/...aim-paranormal-santa-claus-sightings-as-fact/
http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/12/eyewitness-accounts-of-santa-im-not-kidding/
http://paranormal.about.com/od/othermiracles/a/Santa-Claus-Sightings.htm
http://paranormal.about.com/od/religiousmysteriesmiracle/a/Readers-Best-Santa-Claus-Sightings.htm
http://paranormal.about.com/od/trueghoststories/a/haunted-christmas.htm
 
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